Democrats have two serious problems, only one of which they seem willing to acknowledge.
First, they talk as if they have contempt for ordinary Americans. Second, they talk that way because — being insufferable authoritarians — they actually do have contempt for ordinary Americans.
On Friday, the center-left think tank Third Way published a memo advising Democrats to at least speak like human beings. The memo identified 45 ubiquitous words and phrases that make Democrats sound like ninnies.
Of course, Third Way did not frame it quite so harshly. But the think tank did tell the truth about why so many Americans despise modern Democrats.
“For a party that spends billions of dollars trying to find the perfect language to connect to voters,” the memo began, “Democrats and their allies use an awful lot of words and phrases no ordinary person would ever dream of saying.”
The memo then divided those words and phrases into six categories.
For instance, under “Therapy-speak” the think tank identified “privilege,” “othering,” “microaggression,” and “safe space” as problems.
Likewise, under “Gender/Orientation Correctness” one finds “pregnant people,” “cisgender,” “deadnaming,” and “patriarchy.”
Friday on the social media platform X, Adam Wren of Politico provided a partial-yet-more-extensive list of words and phrases — separated from their respective categories — that the think tank has advised Democrats against using.
Scoop: Third Way is circulating a memo, shared first with @playbookdc, featuring a new black list of words Dems shouldn’t use. pic.twitter.com/VhvVHZTW9C
— Adam Wren (@adamwren) August 22, 2025
Matt Bennett, Third Way’s executive vice president of public affairs, explained the memo.
“We are doing our best to get Democrats to talk like normal people and stop talking like they’re leading a seminar at Antioch,” Bennett told Politico.
Of course, one can hardly argue with Third Way’s diagnosis — nor its choice of words and phrases to avoid.
On the other hand, the memo’s authors seem to believe that Democrats need only to change the way they talk in order to stop coming across as loathsome.
The problem, of course, is that most modern Democrats are insufferable authoritarians. They have demonstrated as much throughout the era of President Donald Trump’s ascendancy.
Moreover, the Third Way memo absolutely drips with irony. Even in acknowledging themselves as repellent scolds, they still cannot help advising one another on how to speak!
Finally, note that one word does not appear in the memo: Nazi. Until they stop using hyperbolic language that actually inverts the truth about who they are and who Trump is, Democrats will remain insufferable authoritarians, and voters will see that truth no matter how many words and phrases Democrats attempt to excise from their vocabularies.
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